Sugar Land’s second annual Italian film festival lineup has been announced

The lineup for the second annual Umbria in Sugar Land, an Italian film festival, was announced this week. The festival will be held Oct. 26-28, and screenings will take place at the Sugar Land Auditorium, 226 Lakeview Drive, Sugar Land. A schedule of events is as follows:

The opening film, “Friends by Chance,” tells a coming-of-age story about a hot-headed 22-year-old troublemaker and an elderly poet living with Alzheimer’s disease forming an unlikely friendship, according to a release from Stevens PR Group.

The film festival features both Italian and European films, meetings with film professionals, cultural events and seminars. The weekend is dedicated to cinematographic culture and celebrates professions behind the scenes of the film industry, according to the release.

The three-day event features public screenings of five award-winning films from the 2018 international film festival, Festival del Cinema Città di Spello ed i Borghi Umbri (also known as IFFS), according to the release. IFFS is an Italian film festival based in Spello, Italy, an ancient town in the province of Perugia in east central Umbria.

Tiziana Triolo, a Sugar Land resident and film lover, presented the idea of bringing award-winning Italian films to Sugar Land to serve as a symbiotic experience between the two cities to create a mutually beneficial partnership between the regions of Fort Bend County and Umbria and the cities of Sugar Land and Spello, the release states.

The festival is hosted by the city of Sugar Land and the Fort Bend Chamber of Commerce in conjunction with the Sugar Land Cultural Arts Foundation and the region of Umbria and city of Spello.

Born and raised in Montgomery County, Beth Marshall graduated from The University of Texas at San Antonio in 2015 with a bachelor's degree in communication and a minor in business. Originally hired as a reporter for The Woodlands edition in 2016, she became editor of the Sugar Land/Missouri City edition in October 2017.